It’s a small stone, no stone of destiny to be sure, but I did swipe it, along with other specimens from a stream along Sligachan Valley. Each had a story. I’ve had plenty of experiences with river bed stones; imagining their histories.

Once, my sister and I found an ovular one that resembled the profile of a dolphin head. The story that one must have had. A jagged jutting cliff off the side of the Appalachian, broken away eons ago. It tumbled and rolled, losing it’s angles until it fell into a stream. A stream that grew into a river, torrential waters roving around the once-cliff and its brethren. Pressing, pushing, condensing, breaking away. As the dolphin took shape, it swam, to rest into the bottom of the river, as it again became a stream, where I, 13 or 14 decided to play in instead of the pool at the hotel with my sister.

This one, hard in my hand, black. The moisture from my hand increases the shade. A remnant from the Black Cuillins? Miles from its home, resting with blue and grey stones from other origins?

“You are no stone of destiny,” I say to it, and I roll it from the tip of my middle finger to my wrist. Letting the weight sit for a second until I roll it back again.

I had a larger stone, one I used as a paper weight in college. He was a sandstone colour, though perhaps not actually sandstone. He was almost a perfect circle, with the middle wider than the edges. But then he flattened to one side. The bottom resembled a potato. I named him Philip, for reasons, not really known–a reference to a children’s show I watched in High School. I thought he was imported, added to the terrain from a distant riverbed to help with erosion in the garden. I am not so sure, however. The sandhills may not have always been sandhills, and the Broad River may not have always been where it is today. Philip may have traveled as any normal stone, by water, not by truck. But now he is with me, I must be a stone klepto.

That trip to Isle of Skye, I learned to skip rocks, but I must have kept more rocks than I actually threw. Such beautiful ones, the way they glistened from the water and the neverending twilight of the north. How do I describe them? I only remember they were beautiful. I took one from Ireland. Only one, and not from a ruin, I heard that was illegal. But when I returned to the states, how odd they must have thought I was, a pocket full of stones in my bag!

I am no geologist, do not think I sat at home analysing each, discovering their real foundations. For now, I let them lie, safe from the force of water which weathers and wears them into grains, into sands. When you get that small, how do you know which is where it all began?

“My thoughts are rambling again.” This stone has so much more history than I shall ever have. I will be dust, and still it goes on. We cannot say it does not have a life. Because it does not want for food, or shelter, it still lives, “That sounds vaguely like a hindu.”

I want to celebrate it. I want to press it to my forehead and store a memory inside the stone, to live on after I am gone. What good does the memory serve the stone? Maybe then, I have given it soul. Or I have added onto it. I cannot say no one, or nothing has done it before. It certainly does not look like a stone some massive skirted-man would have tossed, but maybe, once, it was.

I feel like I am falling apart. My seams so poorly done, that they slip and slide through the wide holes caused by constant restitching.

Is it because I haven’t been writing? Is it because my car, at present, which is literally falling apart, seems like a horrible allusion to myself? Or because I am letting so many things bother me that shouldn’t? So often I wonder, “Why do I give a damn? Why is it important? Why say or do anything at all?”

Perhaps it is because now, almost more than ever, I am afraid to talk to even my closest friends about what is going on. Is it because I can’t put the true issue into words? Because there is no true issue? Because their answers are not my answers, what I want to hear? All I hear in my mind are the same rationalisations for my unhappiness. They circle around and around in the drain, but never flow away. The sink is clogged. I can’t clear it.

I have not had a truly good day in a very long time. I’m not totally sure when that day was.

For someone who has as many “Tiffanies” as I do, you would think I would have a handle on this. But I lost the reins somewhere. The horse gallops and trips–casting me off.

Maybe it’s the hormones playing with my emotions, my memories, my dreams. I have had some odd ones of late, but last night woke me in a panic. The world was ending, and my family committed suicide together. Without me. Leaving me alone in a deteriorating world, with just a letter promising to meet me on the other side. This is by far, the worst dream I have ever had to date.

It’s safe to say that I am at an all time low, and there is no immediate reprieve.

I know I have edited myself, and this blog. And this isn’t a cry for help; fuck, I’ll live, but right now I’m going to be very unhappy about it. What I need to do though, is be true to myself and my feelings, at least here, if not anywhere else.

After all, as many people have let me down, I have let myself down the most. No one seems to understand that, or realise that. And I forgive myself some of the transgressions, but in the end, I have limited myself in so many ways, I fear there is no reparation.

So how do I fix this? Without returning to the angsty 14 year old who blamed anything and everything on her mother. I definitely want to blame a lot on circumstance. That’s unavoidable. I am constantly limited by things society finds important. I feel so confined in it. I am a rabbit caught between a hawk and a fox. My heart beating so fast that I will soon expire, unless I dart, dart away, until I am far from danger.

Statement of Intents are so difficult. I assume everyone struggles with them, but it’s possible that some people out there are just so good at saying everything just the right way that no one would dare contradict them.

I begin each blog with a statement of intent, but it doesn’t make anything easier. I still have a horrible fear of coming off as insincere or contrived. Thus, maybe, you can see my current stress over writing just one draft of many to come of a statement of intent for Graduate school. I have spoken with two professors, from two different schools. They both say very similar things. I am adhering to their advice as best as I can, but I still wonder how much editing and re-editing and deep breaths are going to get me through this.

And what if it is still complete and utter crap? Don’t get me started on my portfolio… I haven’t even really, truly, begun on that.

So that is my current plague. I needed to toss that in. I will have at least one little creative piece by the end of this week. As a promise to myself, and perhaps to you, since my wordpress stats are looking a little sad.